Turkish-Syrian relations revisited.

• Author: Aras, Bulent

THIS ARTICLE SEEKS TO ANALYZE the problems between Turkey and Syria and what has caused these problems in the relations between the two countries, as well as critically analyzing the nature and severity of these problems. Of special critical importance is the evaluation of the extent of the domestic political configurations in the relations between these two countries. We will also answer two other questions to provide a comprehensive analysis of the relations between Turkey and Syria, namely: Do Turkish decision-makers decide who their rivals are on the basis of intrinsic national interests, or have they merely been reacting to images projected by self-interested politicians and external actors? Is Turkey drifting into a potentially dangerous rivalry without sufficient reason with Syria as a primary opponent? In this paper, it is argued that Turkey's policy towards Syria has become hostage to the worldview of Turkey's governing elite, one that has demonstrated itself to be increasingly unable to cope success fully with political change on domestic, regional, and international levels.

Turkish foreign policy toward Syria has been shaped by both material and ideational factors. Any analyses ignoring ideational factors will fall short of explaining foreign policy behavior toward Syria. The official policy of Turkey can be defined as a concious alienation from and disregard within the framework of pursuing a controlled tension with Syria. The experiences in this process have shaped the cognitive map of Turkish establisment's identity, which give direction to foreign policy toward Syria. The Turkish conciousness of Arabs and Syrians has not occurred ex nihilo, but has been represented through the restructuralization of the past and its incorporation into a modern consciousness. Turkish-Syrian relations go back to the Ottoman era, and a comprehensive study is required to integrate the historical legacy and impact of historical imagination to the analysis of the relations in the contemporary era.

IDENTITY AND FOREIGN POLICY

The basic elements of the Turkish state identity were mainly constructed in the early Republican era, when the founding fathers of the Republic applied a reform project to create a "civilized and modem" nation. (1) This emerging new identity --later called the Kemalist identity- was the product of a pragmatic-eclectic ideology that took shape on an international level in the 1920s and 1930s. It was inspired by Comtean positivism adopted by certain Ottoman intellectuals at the end of the l9th century, as well as the process of westernization initiated during the same period. This project was basically a modernization project dependent upon the three pillars of nationalism, westernization and secularism. In this vein, the foundational elements of the Kemalist identity were the abandonment of the Ottoman past, the termination of Islamic power in the public sphere -preventing it from functioning as a source of political legitimacy- an understanding of citizenship that excludes non-Muslim minorities, all within an ethno-linguistic and territorial conception of state. While clamoring for increased modernization and Westernization so as to elevate Turkey to the economic level of the civilized world, official identity, at the same time, has been the source of distrust and a latent enmity towards the West inherited from the Ottoman administrative elite. Any careful analyst will recognize that official identity has been shaped not by limited westernization but through praxis of a third world nationalism deeply influenced from the 19th century nation-state model of Europe. (2)

Although the official identity was projected as a civic one, the burden of the Ottoman imperial past and Kurdish rebellions in early periods of the republic led to a shift to ethnic nationalism exclusively based on Turkishness. (3) The early steps of the Kemalist long march toward westernization were in conformity with creating an ethnic and homogenous national identity at home. As Kilinc argued: "in the early Republican era, there had not been seen identity crises. Contrarily, the foreign policy extensions of the Turkish identity shows us that the westernization and nationalism were the overlapping tendencies during the early Republican period." (4) The 75 years of westernization process could not diminish the material and mental differences between Turkey and Europe. Indeed, the intrinsic enmity survived with the strengthening senses of Turkish self and European other. The limited nature of Turkish westernization reveals itself in limited changes, such as adoption of the Latin script and changes in family l aw.

The new Turkish republic had a defensive character and it would not be wrong to argue that this character is inherited from the Ottoman experience of preserving the country in the last three centuries of the empire. A taturk's (the founder of modem Turkey) principle of "Peace at Home, Peace in the World" has long been a dominant rallying cry, and policy makers have conducted Turkish foreign policy in an introverted and reluctant manner. The paranoia, or Sevres Syndrome, which has a long history among the Turkish people, is based on the notion that the country is surrounded by enemies and constantly faces the danger of break-up or partition. This distinctively Turkish view of the world still plays a vital role in shaping the minds of Nationalist foreign policy makers. This explanation reminds us of Jutta Weldes' argument that: "insecurity is itself the product of processes of identity construction in which the self and the other, or multiple others, are constituted...they can all be seen as resting on the assu mption that identity and insecurity are produced in a mutually constitutive process." (5)

Thus, it is not appropriate to employ realist measures to explain Turkish foreign policy behavior. It has its own "rights and wrongs" and is heavily value oriented. Namely, official identity defines the threats based on its own culture of security. Foreign policies come to be extensions of domestic politics and the "others" excluded during the construction of the Kemalist identity provide negative input for foreign policy formulation, making foreign policy hostage to considerations of the establishment identity. In the end, ideological narrowing in domestic politics causes foreign policies to be harsher, less sensitive to change and less flexible.

There is an imagined threshold that Turkish foreign policy behavior turns to be very responsive and even dares to undertake a high degree of risk. This dare to take risks also comes from the masculine nature of Turkish politics. Although the masculinity and iron-fist of "father state" is visible in domestic politics, it has rarely found expression in foreign policy. Foreign policy makers have often played an extremely cautious role and only in a few cases have dared to undertake risk. As explained, the intersection of high domestic sensitivities along with international ones (in conformity with the threat perception) and the suitability of international context give blood and spirit to repressed masculinity in foreign policy behavior. The Turkish threat to use military means to prevent Russian surface to air missiles' transfer to Greek Cyprus, tension with Greece during the Kardak (Imia) crisis and the overtly exagerrated promise to be a panacea to all ills of the Turkish republics (in the former Soviet South ) are just a few recent examples in this regard. However, in each case, the reasons that stimulate passing this threshold are different, and each should be analyzed in its own domestic and international contexts.

We hold the premise that the October, 1998, crisis between Turkey and Syria, and subsequent relations can be explained through this theoretical framework. After discovering the Turkish cognitive map of identity and its reflection in Turkish foreign foreign policy in a comprehensive way, we will directly employ this framework to Turkish-Syrian relations, which will serve for a better understanding of relations, in comparison to traditional scholarship of Turkish-Arab relations that has generally been based on the realist assumptions.

In foreign policy, with respect to Ankara's role in the Middle East, Turkey is seen as an important country in region-wide security issues with surrounding regions. Thanks to its military power, it is the second largest force in NATO and is far stronger and better equipped than the majority of the neighboring countries. In its political identity, torn between ties with Europe versus ties with the U.S., Turkey's nationalist policies present an image of a country becoming more introverted, nationalistic and rapidly arming itself as a result of security concerns. Nevertheless, Turkey is still not included within the agenda of disputes over the security of the Middle East or the Gulf region. The reasons for Turkey's exclusion are the...